Dave's Journal / Mar2026
Speaking of art . . . we hit the Boston MFA yesterday for the first time in many months. It was supreme to get out of the house and into Boston, even for this short trip.
On the way out, we stumbled upon a supreme exhibit of Hindu lithographs, called "Divine Color". LINK
The internet pictures don't do the real thing justice. A room full of the actual pictures just knocks you out.
It was very dark at this point.
Four rabbits showed up, here are 3 of them.
Could not decide if they liked each other or not.
Tried many reboots ..... nope. Not gonna work.
Bought it maybe 5 years ago - from a guy in a parking lot. I eventually got disgusted with the Mac OS and in 2024, I installed a Linux OS and liked it a lot more. It had it's quirks, but it did what I needed. Until this last week. So .... Mike gets this unit for whatever he can do with it, and I just bought a used Lenovo T470 with very nice specs at a very nice price. (Didn't get here yet.)
BACKUPS - do them often.
Fingers crossed that Mike can recover my files (nothing life-urgent - this was mostly my "porch computer") but still hope to recover what's there. In the meantime, this morning I backed-up my "real" computer to 2 separate external hard drives (duplicates). I back this unit up once a month or so.
Oh but yes ..... we didn't think of the snow that hadn't melted away.
We gave it shot - walk along the sea wall ("The Marginal Way") but none of us had proper snow shoes on and we bailed out to the streets after a while. Beautiul day though. Very.
Came home with a 1931 Stutz Bearcat....
"Owning a Stutz Bearcat became a status symbol for the wealthy of the era. In 1914 it was priced at $2,000 (equivalent to $64,286 in 2025)."
Okay ... I had a MacPro that recently died on me .... see the short story a few boxes above here.
Gave the dead Mac to Mike (whose expertise may resurrect it though I never want to see it again.)
Bought a Lenovo T470 on Ebay, used, $300, Ububtu Linux 24.04 in excellent condition.
Installed the desktop that I like (Xfce). Got it to look (picture below) and behave like my much loved vintage Lenovo X230. Loaded and tested all the programs that I need and love and they run fine and desktop shortcuts all work (as of today).
Then the task ... I had 810Gb of files stored on the X230 and duplicate external backup drives.
Then one of those drives died when I pulled out the cable (unmountable the message said).
Well ....... It has taken days to clean up and copy and fidget with files from computers and hard drives
But I believe I am 95% done with this task. The T470 is running well and I am about to strip the X230 bare and give it back to Mike (who gave it to me about 20 years ago !!
Extremely nice, 50s nostalgic diner. Had breakfast today - been a long time since we went there. Supreme poached eggs on corned beef. Promised ouselves to go once a month hearafter.
Place was filled when we got there, then emptied out (must be us, huh !).
Betty greets you at the door.
You remember Betty, correct ?
1950s Rockabilly Music .... on the porch today with (among others) Eddie Cochran .....
Yesterday it was Rockabilly on the porch, today it was live New Orleans jazz played by the "vintage" musicians of The New Black Eagle Jazz Band. GE buddy Bill M. is a clarinet player and he convinced me I needed to see these guys at Groton Hill. It was a good idea.
Well, it was a good show. Lots of gray hair in the audience and on the stage, which made me happy. Here's the closing applause. Good afternoon and Bill and I look forward to more shows at this local music hall.
I am working on the huge task of cleaning up many Gb's of large old and somewhat forgotten files (mostly pictures and videos) that I have routinely saved thinking "some day I'll clean up this mess". Well ... the days of reckoning are at hand.
Dredged up and modified an old script so it now reads ...
Repeat this through every folder with large JPG.
Tedious work but it will get me where I want to go.